


Going Home

by ScaryScarecrows



Series: Garage Tapes [8]
Category: Gotham City Garage (Comics)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mentions of prior character death, little bit of world study, plot haha nah, the desert at night is a beautiful thing guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-11-18 16:46:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18123887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScaryScarecrows/pseuds/ScaryScarecrows
Summary: He wants to go home. And the last time he’d wanted that this badly, it had taken six goddamn months to get there.





	Going Home

**Author's Note:**

> Recommended mood music: Dorothy’s ‘Philadelphia’.

There’s a lot of things Jason Todd doesn’t tell people. Every aspect of his life is on a need-to-know basis, and, well, most people don’t need to know. He **surrounds** himself with people that don’t need to know. It’s a very calculated thing, living.

Most people know-or at least have been told, whether or not they believe it-that he’s been dead, and not just for a couple of minutes. Six months. Long enough to rot, at least a little. He doesn’t know, or want to know, that sort of detail.

Most people don’t know the what-happeneds, the fact that he woke up after six months of bein’ worm food and dug his way out. Made it home on autopilot with **s’cold s’cold why’s it so cold** and **I should’ve come straight home like I said I was gonna m’sorry please don’t be mad at me** ringing in his head. They don’t know how he ended up in a grave to begin with.

It hadn’t been an accident, and it hadn’t been quick, hadn’t been merciful. It had been two days of being cuffed to a gurney in a sterile, white room, begging for them to let him go home, **please** —

Electricity **hurts**.

And then it had been over. To this day, he’s not sure if it was pity or just the time, but someone-big guy, smooth hands that felt like they’d never so much as held a screwdriver-had snapped his neck. Boom. Done. Maybe it took him a few minutes to die after that, he doesn’t remember, but the pain had been over.

He’s pretty sure not even Dove knows that part. Could be wishful thinking, but he’s pretty sure she doesn’t. Hopes she doesn’t, anyway.

Honestly-and yeah, s’a little morbid, but sue him-he’s pretty sure he at least made a pretty corpse. Y’know, minus the bruising (he’d put up a fight, or tried to) and the deep grooves in his wrists and ankles from him seizing against the cuffs. They hadn’t, like, beat the shit out of him, or hacked pieces off. So at least there’s that, right?

That’s the question Jason’s trying desperately to ignore right now, at two-thirty in the morning, as he looks up at his ceiling. It’s white and boring, because he’s an adult now and adults don’t get to plaster glow-in-the-dark stars and band posters on the ceiling. Especially not when they have minions. But at the same time, he’s considering sticking one measly star up there anyway. The ceiling is a little too stark, a little too like another one he spent time under.

His muscles hurt and he **knows** it’s psychosomatic, phantom aftershocks, but that doesn’t make the pain any less there.

**Ignore them and they’ll stop.**

He wishes he was at home tonight, with his stars and his posters. After about five minutes of trying to ignore that, too, he sighs, gets up, and starts getting dressed. It’s two hours out, and yeah, nighttime driving is dangerous out here, but it’ll at least clear his head. He’ll be back tomorrow afternoon, promise, but right now? He wants to go home. And the last time he’d wanted that this badly, it had taken six goddamn months to get there.

He leaves a sticky note, so these morons won’t get lost trying to find him (as though he can’t take care of himself, **humph** ), debates a little on **bike or car** , and figures he’ll take the bike. The car’s cool, but the ex-owner…

Not tonight. He can’t deal with that tonight. It had been frightening enough the first time, to wake up and see that looming over him like the Angel of Death, and he’s on edge tonight as it is. Last thing he wants is to have a full-blown flashback and crash. He’s not suicidal, just tired.

The desert stretches out, endless and silver from the moonlight. Something screams, miles away, but it’s suddenly cut off. He hasn’t seen most of the things that hunt at night. Sometimes he just hears them.

Sometimes, he just sees what they’ve left.

He swerves around a cactus and pushes the bike up to eighty, ninety, ninety-five. That’s fine. Wouldn’t want to be too reckless.

Considering the heat they endure during the day, the nights can be cold, colder than you’d realize. There’s a window of Perfection early in the morning and late, late in the afternoon, when the shadows are reaching for you like otherworldly fingers, but the rest of the time? Not so much. And tonight’s windy to boot, even at a stop. Now, at the speed he’s going, the gusts don’t care that his jacket’s zipped up all the way. They’re clawing at his throat and burrowing up his sleeves to nip at the insides of his elbows.

And yet, it’s not so bad. It wakes him up a little more, anyway. And the coffin was colder.

Something takes flight as he zooms by another cactus, this one the type that likes to leap out at unsuspecting passerby*. He catches a glimpse of something in the air before it vanishes into the night, but all he knows is that it has wings and isn’t very big. It probably won’t come back to make a meal of him, then-oh. He’s almost there already, there’s the old man cactus that got struck by lightening last year. Split partway down, but it lives on, God knows how.

He gives it the finger. He’d tried to pet it as a kid and suffered for it. Asshole.

A cloud blows across the moon, turning the silver sands black, but it doesn’t matter. He’s home. Made good time, too, an hour and a half. Where’d the time go?

He lets himself in, kinda trying to be quiet but not overworried, ‘cause Dove worked nights for years before she took him in and half the time she’s still awake at this hour.

But not tonight. The house is dark and quiet and he pulls off his boots before slipping upstairs and into his old room, with its glowing stars still giving off a little bit of light. He puts on new pajamas and crawls under the covers, suddenly sapped. And he’s **out** after that, even when something screams again just under his window. It can’t get in, so it doesn’t matter.

THE END

 

 

 

*Fun fact: these are real. Jumping cholla like to latch onto anything that walks too closely. The old man cactus is also real-they look furry. Don’t pet them, you’ll regret it.


End file.
